Abstract:
The understudied process of reporting suspected child maltreatment to authorities is often difficult for both mental health professionals and family members who are intimately involved. Therefore, the current study was conducted to develop a training curriculum to assist professionals in reporting suspected child maltreatment. Fifty-five professional and student mental health practitioners were randomly assigned to workshop conditions that were relevant to either (a) reporting suspected child maltreatment or (b) learning to be sensitive to ethnicity. Results indicated participants in the reporting suspected child maltreatment condition demonstrated significant improvement in knowledge of child maltreatment reporting laws, accuracy in recognizing child maltreatment, and clinical expertise in reporting. Implications to clinical practice are discussed in light of the results.
Experts have long stressed the need to adequately train professionals to report suspected child maltreatment (Beck, Ogloff, & Corbishley, 1994; Kenny, 2001). Unfortunately, there has not been widespread dissemination of training programs to assist professionals in mandated reporting of suspected child maltreatment. For instance, of the 142 American Psychological Association (APA)-accredited doctoral programs, only 11% were found to offer courses specific to child maltreatment, with fewer still including evidence-based procedures involved in the reporting suspected child maltreatment (Champion, Shipman, Bonner, Hensley, & Howe, 2003).
The current article reports the development of a training program to assist professionals in effectively reporting suspected child maltreatment. Along these lines, we first underscore child maltreatment reporting practices and techniques that have been promoted based on clinical lore or results found in uncontrolled trials (i.e., did not involve random assignment of participants to experimental conditions or case trials involving multiple baseline or withdrawal experimental designs). We then review a training program that is specific to child maltreatment reporting and found to be efficacious in a single-case multiple baseline trial. This program incorporates many of the practices and techniques that have been pioneered in uncontrolled trials. However, as will be carefully reviewed below, this program lacks important features that are relevant to dissemination, such as visual aides and facilitation of structured opportunities to practice demonstrated skills with peers. Moreover, this program has yet to be examined in a randomized controlled trial. Therefore, the current study was conducted to further develop this intervention by comparing it to an active control intervention that is specific to training professionals to enhance their ethnic cultural sensitivity. (Author Abstract)